Vaz: I opted to return to help build a national theatre.
Michael Reckord, Contributor
THE SAYING 'drama is about laughter and tears' is depicted by the well-known symbol of the art form, two juxtaposed masks, one comic, the other tragic.
The theatre pioneer, retired University of the West Indies (UWI) drama tutor and lecturer in 20th century theatre, Noel Vaz, generally swings between laughter and sorrow as he reminisces about his long life in Jamaican theatre.
One comic anecdote over which he chuckled in a recent interview concerned his work with La Ciba Sonami, a Jamaican who had returned home to produce theatre after working as a dancer in various Hollywood movies.
As stage manager for one of her revues, Consomme Etoile (Star Soup) at Ward Theatre, Vaz said he learnt what a produ-cer should not do.
HILARIOUS ANECDOTE
He recalled that the 'cast' of one item, Nanny Town Romance, included a donkey, a goat, fowls and also pigeons flying around the ceiling. Before the curtain went up one night, the donkey wandered off on East Queen Street. It was brought back in a highly nervous state, and "as the curtain went up, a shower (from the donkey) came down."
While the donkey was being attended to, the goat (which had been tied onto what looked like a real rock but was a camouflaged bit of the set) started to pull the 'rock' around the stage.
Then two of the girls got into a fight and Vaz had to dash into their dressing room to separate them.
The pigeon trainer who, early in the production, assured Vaz that the pigeons would not drop any 'bombs' on the audience because of the judicious use of chewing gum ended up eventually with only one pigeon. The others, she said, had died of 'hockee' poisoning.
One night La Ciba, who was to emerge on the stage from a gigantic flower, a Night Blooming Cereus, when a Mr Boehm, the Boston puppeteer, pulled certain strings, could not get out at the appointed time. Mr Boehm, who operated the strings, was watching the show from the auditorium.
Inside the flower she started cursing, audibly, while the band played her dance number twice. When La Ciba eventually burst open the petals, the orchestra had moved to the second tune and the dancer proceeded to dance to the wrong music.
One melodramatic piece, 'Spectre of the Storm', was set in an old Spanish castle and included a villain who murdered his wives and threw them off the cliff around the castle.
The illusion of the cliff was ruined when two guitarists in the show walked across the back of the stage where the cliff should have been.
One of the murdered wives kept looking out from backstage to see when she should enter. Her 'blood', probably ketchup, was all over the neck of her costume and every time she looked out, the audience roared with laughter.
Among the painful memories Vaz has are the problems he had with Little Theatre Movement (LTM) founder Greta Fowler, and the term-long 1970 occupation of the then Creative Arts Centre (now the Sir Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts) by students while Vaz was drama tutor there.
The latter incident, he claims, turned him off any further directing for the centre, though he did assist other directors who worked there.
Ironically, though he later could not get along with Mrs. Fowler, it was an early association with the LTM which got him his first drama scholarship.
INTEREST IN DRAMA
His love for drama started while Vaz was a student at Calabar High School, whose principal, the Reverend Ernest Price, encouraged the boys to mount plays.
The love continued after Vaz left school in 1938, just before the start of World War 2, and he acted in a war fund-raising production of Twelfth Night by Joan Grant, the wife of an army officer.
"I realised then I couldn't act, but I became very interested in the technical side of theatre," says Vaz.
As a result of a number of productions for the LTM, notably A Midsummer Night's Dream at Holy Cross Church on a 40-foot stage, Vaz got a British Council scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.
RETURNING TO JAMAICA
He stayed there only half-a-term, however, and transferred to the newly-opened Old Vic Theatre School. There he studied under the famed French director Michel St Denis, as well as Tyrone Guthrie and George Devine.
The scholarship was extended for a second year but, to his subsequent regret, when his studies ended Vaz chose to return to Jamaica instead of getting more experience in London's theatre.
"I opted to return to help build a national theatre," he says.
He worked with the LTM for two years and worked on several productions, but left because he "couldn't take it any longer."
By that time he and Doris Hastings had formed a group to produce excerpts of Shakespeare plays being studied for 'O' Level examinations. The project took the group, on weekends, to several parishes. The Ministry of Education assisted with 500 pounds sterling.
Vaz then returned to England for some years, "working in theatre, at the BBC and at odd jobs", until he was invited by UWI Extra Mural Department Head Philip Sherlock to become the university's second drama tutor.
The first, Errol Hill, was at Mona, and Vaz was sent to the UWI's Trinidad campus. An important production he directed there was Derek Walcott's epic drama Drums and Colours, written at Vaz' suggestion for the opening of the Federal Parliament.
The production included performers from several Caribbean islands, with Reggie Carter and Easton Lee going from Jamaica.
The success of the production led to Vaz getting a second scholarship and doing further studies at a number of universities in the United States.
As UWI drama tutor, Vaz kept urging the authorities to consider building a theatre and eventually the Creative Arts Centre (CAC) was built.
At the CAC, he produced a number of plays, including Marat/Sade in the 'round' and, to open the new theatre, Soyinka's The Road.
Other important works Vaz directed included the LTM pantomimes, Busha Blue Beard and Br'er Anancy, which he wrote, and Queenie's Daughter (co-written with Dennis Scott); Waiting for Godot, with Lloyd Reckord and Thom Cross in the main roles; Once Upon a Seaweed, written by Alma Mock Yen, with which Rex Nettleford and Eddy Thomas were associated, and the open-air production of Rashamon at Vale Royal.
Stars of that Japanese-based drama included Easton Lee, Neville Black and Mona Chin.
Vaz tells another animal anecdote about that last production. One night, Vaz says, the horse used in the play stepped on Black's foot and refused to move. Black gave a mighty tug, his foot came free and his shoe went flying into the audience. Ballet mistress Mademoiselle Soohih dashed to retrieve it, but fell flat on her face.
Vaz has many other anecdotes to tell. Not surprisingly, he is being urged to write a book.
